It's a non-conference schedule featuring three great home games: one against a perennial FCS playoff team, another against a perennial FCS Top 25 team, and a game against an Ivy League team that consistently seems to be a challenging, thrilling game.

The 2011 football season features a schedule with a lot of close road trips as well - easily allowing fans to catch every game, home or away. (more)

“We have another outstanding schedule awaiting us in 2011,” explained Coen, the 2010 Patriot League Coach of the Year. “We will play three scholarship programs from automatic qualifying conferences that will present tremendous challenges for our team. We also play two of our traditional Ivy League rivals and will begin league play with three tough games on the road. It will be exciting to play our final three games at home culminating with the 147th Lehigh-Lafayette game.”

“It has always been my philosophy to challenge ourselves with our non-league schedule and clearly we have done that this year,” Coen said. “We will need to improve week after week and keep our focus on winning our tenth Patriot League Championship.”

The out-of-conference games are especially interesting, starting with a trip to the Jersey Shore on Labor Day weekend to face Monmouth. While Lehigh has only faced the Hawks twice in 1999 and 2005, scoring 50 points in both contests, it's safe to expect that Lehigh's first-ever trip to visit the land of The Situation and Snooki will be a much tighter affair than those games.

“It is great to have a program of UNH’s caliber coming to Goodman Stadium for our home opener,” Coen said. “UNH currently owns the most consecutive playoff appearances in the nation. Coach McDonnell and his staff do one of the best coaching jobs in the country. I was very disappointed in our performance last year in Durham, but I am looking forward to our players stepping up to the challenge on September 10.”

If Lehigh is fortunate enough to get by Monmouth, this game could be the first matchup of Top 25 teams at Murray Goodman since Colgate traveled to Lehigh in 2004.

Making matters more challenging for Lehigh is the fact that the Wildcats will have a slew of great players returning, notably DE Brian McNally and local product WR Joey Orlando. Even though the helmets will say "UNH", there are a lot of Pennsylvania kids on the Wildcats roster as well.

After a trip to nearby Princeton for the Tigers' home opener - one that always seems to be a preparation nightmare for Lehigh's coaches - Lehigh will host Liberty out of the Big South in Murray Goodman. The Flames, a consistent resident in the FCS Top 25 under head coach Danny Rocco, should bring an extremely festive atmosphere to Murray Goodman with their rabid fans and their 100 piece band. They'll also bring QB/ATH Mike Brown as well, a player that made mincemeat of Lafayette a couple of years ago in a 19-13 victory.

Then there's Yale and head coach Tom Williams, who returns to Lehigh for the first time since they beat Lehigh 7-0 without scoring an offensive touchdown. Aside from a wish to seek revenge against the Eli for that game, the games against Yale are almost always thrilling affairs: aside from a close 23-7 game at the Yale Bowl in 2007, the last four meetings between Yale and Lehigh have been settled by a touchdown or less, including a 28-21 overtime win in 2005. Since that victory, Lehigh has lost three straight to the Bulldogs.

Then comes the Patriot League schedule - which, strangely, features three road games followed by three home games. Bucknell will kick off Lehigh's Patriot League schedule, followed by Fordham (which doesn't count in the standings) and a trip to Hamilton, New York in late October against Colgate that promises to be a big game in terms of the Patriot League title.

The schedule concludes with home games against Holy Cross, Georgetown... and, of course, the 147th meeting of "The Rivalry" against Lafayette.

“The last five years have proven that our league is extremely competitive and that you must show up and play well each week,” Coen explained. “We are the only team in the league to have won outright, or shared two titles in the last five years, but it has been a while since any team won back-to-back titles. As the defending champs I know we will have a bull’s eye on our back.”

It's a schedule that ducks nobody. It's not as difficult as last year's schedule - which featured the defending national champions Villanova, New Hampshire and Harvard, all on the road - but it's still a loaded schedule that will feature a lot of action against Top 25 teams, with not a single patsy among them.

While no starting times have been announced, below I've listed my tentative starting times based on other announcements - and the knowledge that Lehigh doesn't have lights, and has had 12:30 kickoff times the last few years. Assuming those are still the home kickoff times, here's what I (tentatively) have:

Labels

Comments

Nice to have 6 home games again...Are we sure they'll be no schedule snafus like last year with Harvard??? The only bad thing is the best time of year weather wise is October and there are no games after the first.. Home games go from the usually hotter weather in September to cooler or cold in November.... Not good for attendance in my view...

Doesn't matter. The students don't attend anymore anyway. Perfect weather last season and horrible showing by student body. I bet there weren't more than 300 students in the stands. The ridiculous regulations the University imposes on the studnet tailgating has taken all the fun away from their attending...And I don't mean just the alcohol. They now have to completely tear down their tailgates and remove them from the lot before the game. So they tailgate and cart the stuff all they way back over the mountain and watch on TV while drinking.

Hey ngineer, I did not know that the university imposed those rules on the students. That is pretty lame, but at the same time those students are the ones that stayed in the parking lot. I'm assuming that the players want the students in the stands to be the ones that want to be there. I guess they will have to party extremely hard at the dorms and then stumble down the mountain for the game. It certainly is a phenomenon that the students don't attend the games the way they used to in the past. Even early 2000's there was a great amount of interest. The last few years in particular I am at a loss. What happened to the make up of the student body? If I had to give the LU students a grade for support of their football team it would just have to be an F! They may be close to the Georgetown fans in terms of support and that is the bottom of the barrel. Nice going students!

Popular posts from this blog

When I heard the news Tubby Raymond, legendary Delaware head football coach, died last week at the age of 92, two immediate memories came rushing back to me.

One occurred on October 16th, 1999, when Tubby had made a complaint to the local paper or radio in the run-up to Kevin Higgins' Mountain Hawks beating his Blue Hens on Delaware's homecoming, 42-35.

I have no idea if the quote even actually happened, but my recollection is that Tubby said that Lehigh had "St. Bartholomew's" on their schedule, and hadn't played anybody. It was a verbal jab that many Delaware fans took with them to the stands to heckle the Mountain Hawk fans that made the short trip to Newark.

Up until that point, I had watched a bunch of Lehigh football games over the years. I experienced their rise in the 1990s. I enjoyed wins, and championships, and playoff victories.

But never had I felt a win so viscerally vindicating than the one over Tubby Raymond&…

Pat was talking about the reception his Lehigh wrestling squad experienced at Allentown's PPL Center this weekend, when a sellout crowd over nearly 10,000 people came to watch No. 1 Penn State grapple with No. 5 Lehigh in a collegiate wrestling event.

It was, by all accounts, something special to behold.

"I thought it was really cool and an exciting place to wrestle," said Penn State wrestler Nick Nevills. "These fans were really into it, a rowdy bunch. It's a lot more fun as an athlete to wrestle in an environment like this. I'd say it was one of the most exciting times I have had in my career."

The sense of spectacle at the PPL center, though, puts a spotlight on what more can be done at Lehigh itself to make their athletic contests into spectacles. It requires money to be spent and energy to be expended. But the…

Lehigh are the Patriot League Football Champs, and will be playing in the 1st round of the FCS playoffs.

The FCS Playoff Bracket is going to be revealed on ESPNU at 11:00AM on Sunday on a selection show. The team will be watching the selections live at the Goosey Gander to find out who they will play, and where.

The chance that Lehigh will host a home playoff game appears to be very slim. Though record is technically not in consideration for whether a team will host a first-round game, other considerations (the lack of lights, no Noon playoff starts) make it difficult if not impossible to host a playoff game at Murray Goodman unless temporary lights are brought in.

Being that's the case, it seems very likely that Lehigh will be playing somewhere on the road in the 1st round. Below the flip, I will give the bracket predictions of the experts and three things I think you should watch for during the selection show.